Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/334

 discovered in the dim light. For hours he paced there, smoking his pipe out several times. The tide came creeping up to his feet and then it receded. He followed the water-line as it withdrew down the shore. His feet made scarcely a mark upon the firm sand. The shining star rose toward the zenith where it was lost among a host of others. And still Uncle Bobby paced the beach and smoked his pipe.

The next day, as Uncle Bobby, in his waders, with his oars over his shoulders, walked across the Point to the shore of the creek, where his boat was moored, he had many questions to answer about that song. He agreed that there was a curious coincidence in the names, but when pressed to give his middle name he gravely said it was Ketchum. Then he pushed his "yacht" off, got aboard her, and disappeared for an all-day trip.

Strange to say, Uncle Bobby's prevailing thought throughout the day, was of his late grandmother, the redoubtable Old Lady Pratt, and of her pride in the Kingsbury connection. "And I said it was Ketchum!" he told himself remorsefully from time to time, feeling more like a culprit than he had done for many a long year. Yet his reflections ended each time in a self-congratulatory chuckle, after which he would draw a long, low whistle, and fall to examining the gun at his feet.

The people of Pleasant Point never found out